Battling King Dice is a test of endurance and shows off how much talent you have with Cuphead’s parrying mechanic
Cuphead has arrived to the Nintendo Switch, and with it comes the challenge of taking down the numerous bosses in the game. One of the hardest bosses in the game, King Dice, is a real test of endurance and proving how well you understand the game’s mechanics. As long as you dodge and outlast your opponents, you should do well against King Dice.
How To Beat King Dice
The Dice Board
At the start of the battle, you’re going to see a floating pink dice in the middle of a dice board. You start on the left side of the dice board, making your way across the entire thing to find yourself against King Dice, once you land on the ‘fin’ tile. By hitting the dice, you’re moving across the board and can hit any of the numbers, or even one of the safe boxes. If you hit one of the numbers, you’re going to fight a mini-boss, and if you hit one of the save tiles, you don’t have to fight anything and get to roll again. As you can imagine, if you’re unfortunate enough to hit the ‘start over’ you’re going to return to the start of the board.
You need to fight at least three of the mini-bosses to make it to King Dice.
Mini-Bosses
There are nine mini-bosses on the board you can potentially fight. However, you only need to beat at least three.
Tile 1
Here, you’re going to fight three different glasses of alcohol. These glasses remain on the right side of the screen, so you don’t have to dodge them. Although, they’re going to send attacks at you from the sky. There’s a waterfall of alcohol that drops from the sky, followed by a wave that crashes across the floor. Avoiding both of these attacks is straightforward. Every so often, you’ll run across flying olives that shoot at you, causing you to jump around, avoiding them. Other than these attacks, there’s not much else you have to look out for to advance.
Tile 2
This fight pits you against a stack of multi-colored betting coins. Fire at them as often as possible. It doesn’t matter which of the three colors you hit. You’re going to see the stack rise, separating them, and you’ll have to jump over the lower one before the middle layer comes out. They’ll land on the other side, and you can start firing at them again. The stack is going to go back and forth across the screen, using different combinations to hit you, so make sure you’re running under the coins or jumping across them. The best way to do this is to remain aggressive and keep your character in the center of the screen to anticipate the jump.
Tile 3
The third tile features a smoking cigar, with your character standing in a pile of ash with the stage’s lower area coated in flames. When you start, begin by firing at the cigar. He’s going to lazily spit out fireballs at you, which you can dodge or duck out of the way. In the middle of the stage, you’re going to see cigarettes flying up from the floor to the ceiling. They’re going to matter because the smoking cigar is going to switch between ashtrays, and you need to jump over to the other one when you see him changing. You’ll need to dodge the cigarettes when you jump across successfully.
Tile 4
The next potential fight features a Domino-based stage, where you’re going to fight a domino sitting on a trapeze swing. You’re standing on a treadmill that’s going to continually lead you backward, which would force you to hit a wall of spikes with occasional spikes on the floor you’ll have to jump over. The domino is going to rise up and down on the trapeze, shooting rolling dice at you that rotate up and down on the screen. You’ll need to watch out for flying birds the domino releases from the bottom of their hat. As long as you keep firing, and avoid the spikes, you should do fine.
Tile 5
The fifth fight features you facing off against a wizard rabbit getting pulled from a hat. You’re going to see an ace card in the middle of the screen pop up, and you want to jump on it quickly. The rabbit is going to summon a swarm of swirling rabbit skulls that rotate around the card, and after they spin around, they’ll close in on you. Jump through the only section not protected by the heads, and then jump back onto the ace card, where another swarm of skulls spawns around you. After doing this a couple of times, the rabbit summons several floating card symbols that rise from the ground to the ceiling. There are two pink ones you can use to parry and safely return to the bottom. Later on the fight, a series of these will spawn on the ceiling and make their way down, but you need to parry the pink one and land on the ace card to avoid further damage.
Tile 6
The sixth fight features a bucking bronco, and you’ll have your character flying in one of their planes. You’ll want to stick to the left side of the screen, making sure to dodge the jockeys at the bottom of the screen who randomly fire up at you. The Bronco is going to fire out presents which eject golden horseshoes, and you’ll see a pink one among them you can parry. These two attacks are all you need to look out for, and can likely take down this boss reasonably quickly.
Tile 7
This next fight is pretty tough. It pits you against a golden roulette. In the center of the screen, you’re going to see four betting coins you can parry, and you’ll want to evade them quickly because the roulette is going to dash across the screen. By parrying the coins, you flip them right-side up, allowing you to stand on them and have some breathing room as it races back and forth.
Once it returns to its original starting point, the roulette is going to spin, and small, white balls are going to fall from the ceiling, starting at the side and work their way to the middle. If you don’t time your parries correctly, you could be in a world of hurt.
Tile 8
Fittingly, the eight battle puts you against an eight-ball from a pool set. The boss settles in the middle of the screen and fires out colorful balls of energy at you. These are easy enough to dodge. However, a pool chalk tablet will crash down where you start and jump across the screen. One spawns on the left side, and then another generates on the other side. You’ll have to run back and forth across the screen, dodging these relentless attacks, but there’s a clear pattern. As one is about to step across the screen, another one takes its place and goes the other way.
Tile 9
The final mini-boss for this stage is a monkey being carried around by a claw. You’re going to fight it in a plane, similar to the bronco fight on tile six. The claw moves the monkey around the carnival screen, forcing you to dodge it nimbly. As you’re dodging it, you’ll want to parry the cards that cover the back of the battle arena and create matches. These matches remain face up. However, if you do not form a match, they return to face down. Once all of the cards are facing up, you can do damage to the monkey, which does not take much to take it down. While you’re flipping all of the cards, the monkey is going to scroll across the screen and use its tambourines to fire musical notes at you, which are easy enough to dodge.
King Dice Boss Fight
After you’ve battled at least three of these mini-bosses, you’re going to reach the ‘fin’ tile, and fight King Dice. Thankfully, he only has one attack you need to watch out for, which is him sending a series of cards across the screen to attack you. To successfully survive this fight, you need to parry the pink cards and jump over them, all the while, continuing to damage him. These cards are the only attack he has, but you need to make sure you effectively parry those cards, or you won’t last long, and you’ll have to start all over again.
